Education imperative : Downtown Fort Worth reaches a long-sought goal with an I.M. Terrell retrofit

February 17,2015

Im Terrell

Photo by Scott Nishimura

Fort Worth public school trustees have long been on the hunt for new educational offerings downtown for the growing residential population. Soon the central business district will get two public high schools nearby.

Combined STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and visual and performing arts academies are headed to Fort Worth’s I.M. Terrell Elementary School just east of downtown, after Fort Worth school trustees voted Feb. 10 to retrofit the historic building for them.

The board’s move will link the campus to downtown’s engineering, design, geology and science business cluster, and the Near Southside’s medical district, downtown leaders believe. It will re-establish full use of an under-used facility, and augment school choices for families who are interested in living in the central business district.

It also may help revitalize the hilltop area that serves children from the Butler housing project and nearby East Lancaster Avenue, dominated by homeless services just across Interstate 30 by bridge, leaders hope.

Safety, cleanliness and landscaping will change once the schools arrive in 2017, and redevelopment should also occur, Dee Jennings, president of the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce, said.

“People will want to get closer to the mother ship,” said Jennings, a graduate of Terrell, which opened as Fort Worth’s first public high school for black students.

Jennings said he believes the city will look for ways to improve access between downtown and the site, now in the middle of a triangle bounded by Interstate 35, U.S. 287 and Interstate 30. It is most easily reached from downtown by East Lancaster.

“I think you’re going to see that develop very quickly,” Jennings said.

The transformation will also likely lead to “an opportunity for Butler to change” in the future, Jennings said.

“Being a realist, Butler will change,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

Trustee Tobi Jackson, an East Sider who helped move the board off of a November decision to place the STEM on the West Side, said she also sees opportunity for the schools to help spur more economic development at the southeast corner of Fort Worth.

“What I hope is our children learn about our history,” Jackson said of Terrell, which closed as a high school and later re-opened as an elementary school mostly serving Butler families.

Andy Taft, CEO of economic development nonprofit Downtown Fort Worth Inc., said of the school board’s vote, “the school board made an inspired choice tonight, and that’s going to benefit generations of Fort Worth citizens.”

Trustees voted unanimously, with board member Judy Needham ill and absent, to rescind their November vote that assigned the STEM academy to a district-owned campus on the West Side and then to assign the high school STEM and visual and performing arts academies to Terrell.

Board members lined up behind the Terrell idea, which had been advanced by trustee T.A. Sims, with new data showing Terrell can be retrofitted within the $73.3 million budget approved by voters in the school district’s 2013 bond election. The district has maintained the school and it’s in good condition, officials said.

“I think this is going to be an awesome school,” trustee Ashley Paz said.

Terrell High is the elementary school’s predecessor and alumni were worried about losing the history.

“To us, this is a back to the future moment, because that’s what we had at I.M. Terrell, all the time,” said Jennings.

Downtown Fort Worth Inc.’s downtown master plan has called for more educational institutions downtown. A science, technology, math and engineering academy would link to the oil and gas and geology sector and the medical district on the Near Southside, DFWI believes.

More schools give downtown residents convenient school choices for their children. Aside from the new high school offerings, downtown includes three higher-education institutions – Tarrant County College, University of Texas at Arlington and Texas A&M School of Law.

The board of the downtown tax increment finance district, administrated by DFWI, last year amended its project and finance plan to include $1 million for a downtown STEM academy. Some DFWI board members also volunteered to help raise money for operations.

The school board voted 7-2 in November to put the STEM on an under-used West Side campus, after studying cost overruns on many of the projects that voters approved in the school district’s 2013 bond election. The board, behind Jackson, put off a decision on locating the visual and performing arts academy pending further study.

That left enough of the opening that led to the combination of the schools at Terrell.

Sims, who recommended Terrell during the November meeting’s debate, continued pressing for the school. Jennings began lobbying trustees, and Downtown Fort Worth Inc. met with a group of trustees.

DFWI’s presence brought downtown business interests into the picture, Jennings said.

“It created a different aura and feeling, in a positive way, and it gave them comfort,” Jennings said.

Besides arguing DFWI’s position that the schools could benefit from proximity to downtown business and the hospital district, Taft said in a letter to trustees that Terrell has been “in constant use and may provide cost advantages.” He also noted Terrell has a recreational field for sports.

AECOM’s data showing the two projects could be done within the original budget was a huge piece, Jennings said, adding “God’s blessing” was the final piece.

“We needed some help on this one,” he said. “It’s a win for the whole school district, because anybody will be able to go to that school.”

“It all fell together in a magical way,” Jackson said.

Members of the I.M. Terrell High School Alumni Association, which had been worried it would lose its meeting place at the school and collection of artifacts collected by historian Beverly Brown Washington, were mollified by the school district’s plan to give the association its own exterior entrance into the alumni center.

“We’re very satisfied,” James Mallard, the alumni association president, said.

Trustees have turned their attention to ensuring the current elementary school’s 200 students will be moved to a good situation.

“Our children come first,” Fort Worth ISD Interim Superintendent Patricia Linares said recently during a board discussion. “Wherever we send them, it is going to be to a place where they get a wonderful education and are loved for the children they are.”

The conceptual plan for the combined school would require a variance from the city for parking, and the district has been working with the city staff on the matter.

Each of the academies would have about 300 students. Pre-STEM and pre-visual and performing arts middle school students would be located at another school.

New construction would include an approximate two to three-story, 66,000-square-foot building for the visual and performing arts that would include a performance hall and a kitchen.

Renovations would be done to the school’s interior, but would not alter its historical features, school district staff members say.

Scott Nishimura
snishimura@bizpress.net